list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around The Goodtimeskid on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/The_Goodtimeskid/273637/default.aspx Title: The Goodtimeskid
Year: 2005
Director: Azazel Jacobs
Plot: Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs offers an absurdist look at life in early-21st Century Los Angeles with this quietly comic tale of two men with the same name, and the woman suddenly caught between them. When jumbled names, an army recruitment slip, and the curiosity of a single man set three unlikely people on a personal odyssey of self-discovery, the stage is set for a quirky tale that follows in the tradition of such cinematic pioneers as Jim Jarmusch, Alex Cox, and Stephen Frears. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Number of blog posts: 4
]]>Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:01:09 GMTThe Goodtimeskid2005Azazel JacobsFilmmaker Azazel Jacobs offers an absurdist look at life in early-21st Century Los Angeles with this quietly comic tale of two men with the same name, and the woman suddenly caught between them. When jumbled names, an army recruitment slip, and the curiosity of a single man set three unlikely people on a personal odyssey of self-discovery, the stage is set for a quirky tale that follows in the tradition of such cinematic pioneers as <a href="/players/P____95892/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jim Jarmusch</a>, <a href="/players/P____86102/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Alex Cox</a>, and <a href="/players/P____90460/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Stephen Frears</a>. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide4http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s273637.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/The_Goodtimeskid/273637/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/9/30/35714.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 9/30/2008 12:01:09 PM
Body: Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou. It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn’t care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimeskid), it’s the rare love letter to influence that’s infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving. 15 year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps) is a prep school bad girl with a mangy mane of hair and, apparently, a drinking problem. When Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), the spoiled little rich boy son of a right-wing politician gets kicked out of his school and introduces himself at Maru’s suburban Mexico school via faking his own hanging at a talent show, the girl is instantly besotted. “He exists, but I also made him up,” she writes in a letter to a friend which doubles as internal monologue. “The best part is that he’s angry.” Roman is equally smitten, and soon the pair are scheming to run away together. Or so they want their parents to think; really, they’re camped out in a tent on the roof of Roman’s father’s mansion. Maru’s hysterical mother and sister come over to the house to become part of the rescue effort––which, under the oversight of Roman’s distant dad, consists mainly of drinking tequila and waiting for clues to come to him. With a stolen cell phone, Roman calls daddy’s security detail with false leads to get the grown ups out of the house so that he and Maru can crawl downstairs and collect provisions. It’s only when the pair decide to finally really leave home that their saga starts to hew to the traditional tropes of love-on-the-run. Explotar is so blatantly indebted to Pierrot le Fou that it’s tempting to play Count the References––here Maru clomps around singing “I don’t know what to do”! Here the screen fills with her notebook scrawled ephemera about romantic destiyn!––but maybe Naranjo’s greatest invention is that, unlike the typical Godard woman, Maru is not a beautiful mystery, but a loud-mouthed firecracker who vacillates between unguarded passion for Roman and brittle rejection of his advances. In cutting off her hair to become Roman’s “twin”, Maru reveals that her attraction to Roman is actually a kind of jealousy. Deluded as she is about most elements of the real world and grown up life, she knows her power over Roman ends the moment she becomes a “put outer”, even if it’s for love, and there’s a resentment there. She’s the kind of realistically conflicted girl almost never seen on screen. The sex scenes between the two teenagers are surprisingly sexy, not because of what you see but because there isn’t much to see at all. Though the nudity is borderline frank in that Euro, “teenage breasts=freedom” sort of way, it’s not overtly titillating so much as it’s recognizably real, from the nervous twitching leading up to it to the lack of assuredness that runs throughout. Maru and Roman’s romance is brittle and tentative at first, but then the floodgates open, at which point, with an almost fin de sicle spirit, it gushes. The peak of Maru and Roman’s relationship coincides with the puncture of their invincibility––once they cement that they are one another’s “perfect accomplice,” as Maru puts it, the time comes to pay the bill for their rebellion. This is the essence of teenage romance––the first love will be the last love––and thus, it’s something we’ve seen on screen before. What feels unique––and genuinely tragic––about Explode’s denouement is not that shit gets violent and people get hurt, but that Maru and Roman, like most kids, clearly never really wanted to get in trouble at all. Mouthy and lazy but ultimately uninterested in any kind of criminal nihilism that would take them too far away from the womb of parental-funded modern comforts, Maru and Roman went looking for a Ferris Bueller-style charmed but temporary time out from mundane responsibility, and end up bumbling into Bonnie and Clyde. In these climes of quirky indie romantic lessons learned, the punishment of starry-eyed delusion feels not only refreshing, but almost like a corrective with political implications. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:01:09 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog9/30/2008 12:01:09 PM Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou. It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn’t care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimeskid), it’s the rare love letter to influence that’s infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving. 15 year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps) is a prep school bad girl with a mangy mane of hair and, apparently, a drinking problem. When Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), the spoiled little rich boy son of a right-wing politician gets kicked out of his school and introduces himself at Maru’s suburban Mexico school via faking his own hanging at a talent show, the girl is instantly besotted. “He exists, but I also made him up,” she writes in a letter to a friend which doubles as internal monologue. “The best part is that he’s angry.” Roman is equally smitten, and soon the pair are scheming to run away together. Or so they want their parents to think; really, they’re camped out in a tent on the roof of Roman’s father’s mansion. Maru’s hysterical mother and sister come over to the house to become part of the rescue effort––which, under the oversight of Roman’s distant dad, consists mainly of drinking tequila and waiting for clues to come to him. With a stolen cell phone, Roman calls daddy’s security detail with false leads to get the grown ups out of the house so that he and Maru can crawl downstairs and collect provisions. It’s only when the pair decide to finally really leave home that their saga starts to hew to the traditional tropes of love-on-the-run. Explotar is so blatantly indebted to Pierrot le Fou that it’s tempting to play Count the References––here Maru clomps around singing “I don’t know what to do”! Here the screen fills with her notebook scrawled ephemera about romantic destiyn!––but maybe Naranjo’s greatest invention is that, unlike the typical Godard woman, Maru is not a beautiful mystery, but a loud-mouthed firecracker who vacillates between unguarded passion for Roman and brittle rejection of his advances. In cutting off her hair to become Roman’s “twin”, Maru reveals that her attraction to Roman is actually a kind of jealousy. Deluded as she is about most elements of the real world and grown up life, she knows her power over Roman ends the moment she becomes a “put outer”, even if it’s for love, and there’s a resentment there. She’s the kind of realistically conflicted girl almost never seen on screen. The sex scenes between the two teenagers are surprisingly sexy, not because of what you see but because there isn’t much to see at all. Though the nudity is borderline frank in that Euro, “teenage breasts=freedom” sort of way, it’s not overtly titillating so much as it’s recognizably real, from the nervous twitching leading up to it to the lack of assuredness that runs throughout. Maru and Roman’s romance is brittle and tentative at first, but then the floodgates open, at which point, with an almost fin de sicle spirit, it gushes. The peak of Maru and Roman’s relationship coincides with the puncture of their invincibility––once they cement that they are one another’s “perfect accomplice,” as Maru puts it, the time comes to pay the bill for their rebellion. This is the essence of teenage romance––the first love will be the last love––and thus, it’s something we’ve seen on screen before. What feels unique––and genuinely tragic––about Explode’s denouement is not that shit gets violent and people get hurt, but that Maru and Roman, like most kids, clearly never really wanted to get in trouble at all. Mouthy and lazy but ultimately uninterested in any kind of criminal nihilism that would take them too far away from the womb of parental-funded modern comforts, Maru and Roman went looking for a Ferris Bueller-style charmed but temporary time out from mundane responsibility, and end up bumbling into Bonnie and Clyde. In these climes of quirky indie romantic lessons learned, the punishment of starry-eyed delusion feels not only refreshing, but almost like a corrective with political implications. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/9/30/35712.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/30/2008 12:00:56 PM
Body: Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou. It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn’t care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimeskid), it’s the rare love letter to influence that’s infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving. 15 year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps) is a prep school bad girl with a mangy mane of hair and, apparently, a drinking problem. When Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), the spoiled little rich boy son of a right-wing politician gets kicked out of his school and introduces himself at Maru’s suburban Mexico school via faking his own hanging at a talent show, the girl is instantly besotted. “He exists, but I also made him up,” she writes in a letter to a friend which doubles as internal monologue. “The best part is that he’s angry.” Roman is equally smitten, and soon the pair are scheming to run away together. Or so they want their parents to think; really, they’re camped out in a tent on the roof of Roman’s father’s mansion. Maru’s hysterical mother and sister come over to the house to become part of the rescue effort––which, under the oversight of Roman’s distant dad, consists mainly of drinking tequila and waiting for clues to come to him. With a stolen cell phone, Roman calls daddy’s security detail with false leads to get the grown ups out of the house so that he and Maru can crawl downstairs and collect provisions. It’s only when the pair decide to finally really leave home that their saga starts to hew to the traditional tropes of love-on-the-run. Explotar is so blatantly indebted to Pierrot le Fou that it’s tempting to play Count the References––here Maru clomps around singing “I don’t know what to do”! Here the screen fills with her notebook scrawled ephemera about romantic destiyn!––but maybe Naranjo’s greatest invention is that, unlike the typical Godard woman, Maru is not a beautiful mystery, but a loud-mouthed firecracker who vacillates between unguarded passion for Roman and brittle rejection of his advances. In cutting off her hair to become Roman’s “twin”, Maru reveals that her attraction to Roman is actually a kind of jealousy. Deluded as she is about most elements of the real world and grown up life, she knows her power over Roman ends the moment she becomes a “put outer”, even if it’s for love, and there’s a resentment there. She’s the kind of realistically conflicted girl almost never seen on screen. The sex scenes between the two teenagers are surprisingly sexy, not because of what you see but because there isn’t much to see at all. Though the nudity is borderline frank in that Euro, “teenage breasts=freedom” sort of way, it’s not overtly titillating so much as it’s recognizably real, from the nervous twitching leading up to it to the lack of assuredness that runs throughout. Maru and Roman’s romance is brittle and tentative at first, but then the floodgates open, at which point, with an almost fin de sicle spirit, it gushes. The peak of Maru and Roman’s relationship coincides with the puncture of their invincibility––once they cement that they are one another’s “perfect accomplice,” as Maru puts it, the time comes to pay the bill for their rebellion. This is the essence of teenage romance––the first love will be the last love––and thus, it’s something we’ve seen on screen before. What feels unique––and genuinely tragic––about Explode’s denouement is not that shit gets violent and people get hurt, but that Maru and Roman, like most kids, clearly never really wanted to get in trouble at all. Mouthy and lazy but ultimately uninterested in any kind of criminal nihilism that would take them too far away from the womb of parental-funded modern comforts, Maru and Roman went looking for a Ferris Bueller-style charmed but temporary time out from mundane responsibility, and end up bumbling into Bonnie and Clyde. In these climes of quirky indie romantic lessons learned, the punishment of starry-eyed delusion feels not only refreshing, but almost like a corrective with political implications. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:00:56 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com9/30/2008 12:00:56 PM Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou. It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn’t care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimeskid), it’s the rare love letter to influence that’s infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving. 15 year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps) is a prep school bad girl with a mangy mane of hair and, apparently, a drinking problem. When Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), the spoiled little rich boy son of a right-wing politician gets kicked out of his school and introduces himself at Maru’s suburban Mexico school via faking his own hanging at a talent show, the girl is instantly besotted. “He exists, but I also made him up,” she writes in a letter to a friend which doubles as internal monologue. “The best part is that he’s angry.” Roman is equally smitten, and soon the pair are scheming to run away together. Or so they want their parents to think; really, they’re camped out in a tent on the roof of Roman’s father’s mansion. Maru’s hysterical mother and sister come over to the house to become part of the rescue effort––which, under the oversight of Roman’s distant dad, consists mainly of drinking tequila and waiting for clues to come to him. With a stolen cell phone, Roman calls daddy’s security detail with false leads to get the grown ups out of the house so that he and Maru can crawl downstairs and collect provisions. It’s only when the pair decide to finally really leave home that their saga starts to hew to the traditional tropes of love-on-the-run. Explotar is so blatantly indebted to Pierrot le Fou that it’s tempting to play Count the References––here Maru clomps around singing “I don’t know what to do”! Here the screen fills with her notebook scrawled ephemera about romantic destiyn!––but maybe Naranjo’s greatest invention is that, unlike the typical Godard woman, Maru is not a beautiful mystery, but a loud-mouthed firecracker who vacillates between unguarded passion for Roman and brittle rejection of his advances. In cutting off her hair to become Roman’s “twin”, Maru reveals that her attraction to Roman is actually a kind of jealousy. Deluded as she is about most elements of the real world and grown up life, she knows her power over Roman ends the moment she becomes a “put outer”, even if it’s for love, and there’s a resentment there. She’s the kind of realistically conflicted girl almost never seen on screen. The sex scenes between the two teenagers are surprisingly sexy, not because of what you see but because there isn’t much to see at all. Though the nudity is borderline frank in that Euro, “teenage breasts=freedom” sort of way, it’s not overtly titillating so much as it’s recognizably real, from the nervous twitching leading up to it to the lack of assuredness that runs throughout. Maru and Roman’s romance is brittle and tentative at first, but then the floodgates open, at which point, with an almost fin de sicle spirit, it gushes. The peak of Maru and Roman’s relationship coincides with the puncture of their invincibility––once they cement that they are one another’s “perfect accomplice,” as Maru puts it, the time comes to pay the bill for their rebellion. This is the essence of teenage romance––the first love will be the last love––and thus, it’s something we’ve seen on screen before. What feels unique––and genuinely tragic––about Explode’s denouement is not that shit gets violent and people get hurt, but that Maru and Roman, like most kids, clearly never really wanted to get in trouble at all. Mouthy and lazy but ultimately uninterested in any kind of criminal nihilism that would take them too far away from the womb of parental-funded modern comforts, Maru and Roman went looking for a Ferris Bueller-style charmed but temporary time out from mundane responsibility, and end up bumbling into Bonnie and Clyde. In these climes of quirky indie romantic lessons learned, the punishment of starry-eyed delusion feels not only refreshing, but almost like a corrective with political implications. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/8/11/33862.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 8/11/2008 1:01:41 PM
Body: At age 35, with just three features under his belt, Azazel Jacobs seems like an unlikely candidate for a retrospective, but if such an endeavor pumps up the profile of his first two, lesser-seen films whilst effectively promoting his soon-to-be-released Momma’s Man, I’m not going to argue against it. BAM will devote five nights of programming to Jacobs this week, with all three of his features shown alongside two films selected by the director: the 1980 Clash vehicle Rude Boy, and Aki Kaurismaki’s La Vie de Boheme. The series opens tonight with a screening of Jacobs’ second film, The GoodTimesKid. A punk rock fantasia shot on 35mm stock infamously stolen from a Hollywood feature, the film stars Jacobs as Rodolfo, a scrappy brooder who kicks his way out of domestic complacency with girlfriend Diaz (played with an irresistible mix of strength and eccentricity by Jacobs’ drop-dead real-life GF, Sara Diaz). In order to join the army, Rodolfo steals the identity of another man named Rodolfo (Gerardo Naranjo), a loner who lives on a liquor-littered little boat. When the first Rodolfo walks out of Diaz’ life on the night she’s throwing a party for his birthday, the second Rodolfo walks right in. Diaz, hungry for the attention and affection that she can’t squeeze out of her Rudolfo, is open to a replacement Rodolfos, at least for a night. Naranjo, who also co-wrote the script, came out of the same AFI class as Jacobs and filmmakers Georgina Riedel and Goran Ducik. Shot on the streets (and buses!) of the residential enclaves around Downtown Los Angeles, GoodTimesKid has a vibe that’s reminiscent (if decidedly lower-concept) to the dystopian romanticism of Ducik’s Wristcutters: A Love Story. It’s my favorite of Jacobs’ films thus far. If you can’t make it to Brooklyn tonight, keep an eye out for GoodTimes’ upcoming DVD release, courtesy of the ubiquitous Benten Films. Also very much of note is Jacobs’ first feature, the rough but bizarrely fascinating Nobody Needs to Know. Shot in black and white in New York City, the film begins with a director (played by Momma’s Man star Matt Boren) auditioning a series of eager young actresses for a role requiring them to improvise a death scene whilst wearing lingerie.  When it comes time for the Jean Seberg-like Iris (Tricia Vessey) to audition, she finds herself unable to go through the motions. The narrative splits to follow both the director who, beguiled by Iris’ refusal to play ball, is desperately trying to get in touch with her; and Iris herself, who studiously ignores her agents persistant calls and drifts into an existential crisis that manifests itself in semi-aggressive inaction. Both stories are filtered through the narration of a young black male who “cuts” between characters and locations as if he’s watching it all via surveillance cameras–taking the power back, he says, from a world that watches him suspiciously regardless of his actual behavior or intent. It’s this aspect of the film’s construction that both elevates Nobody into something really risky and different, but also precludes any real engagement with Iris and her issues. Though the film features performances from a number of name actors (Tricia Vessey, Norman Reedus and, in a funny self-mocking cameo, Emily Mortimer), it never really found an audience or an interested distributor. In notes prepared for the BAM series, Jacobs admits that he got a little bit in over his head with it, as “writing, shooting, cutting and raising funds for years,” led to a loss of focus. “Guess I had dreams of changing cinema, somthing I won’t attempt again, but proud that I tired.” Jacobs eventually put it online for free streaming. You can watch it at the Internet Archive. Showing Jacobs’ three films together (Sundance hit Momma’s Man will screen on Friday, a week before its theatrical release via Kino) reveals much about how Jacobs has grown as a filmmaker while sticking to relatively consistent themes. At the risk of being reductive, these are three films about going into isolation, of people at ill-defined psychic crisis points attempting to force change by going into withdrawl. In Nobody and GoodTimes, our glimpse into the lives of the characters––or as the narrator of Nobody would put it, our power over them––concludes before that change starts to fully take hold. Less concerned than either with formal style Momma’s Man is the more universally satisfying film in part because it’s more conventional––it’s got a true sense of catharsis and emotional closure that the other films lack, it lets the audience exhale before the go home. It’s about somebody who isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but ultimately finds it, and then appears to be able to move on. The same could be said of it’s filmmaker––Momma’s Man feels like the the period on the end of the first paragraph of a career. Maybe it’s the perfect time for an Azazel Jacobs retrospective after all. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:01:41 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog8/11/2008 1:01:41 PM At age 35, with just three features under his belt, Azazel Jacobs seems like an unlikely candidate for a retrospective, but if such an endeavor pumps up the profile of his first two, lesser-seen films whilst effectively promoting his soon-to-be-released Momma’s Man, I’m not going to argue against it. BAM will devote five nights of programming to Jacobs this week, with all three of his features shown alongside two films selected by the director: the 1980 Clash vehicle Rude Boy, and Aki Kaurismaki’s La Vie de Boheme. The series opens tonight with a screening of Jacobs’ second film, The GoodTimesKid. A punk rock fantasia shot on 35mm stock infamously stolen from a Hollywood feature, the film stars Jacobs as Rodolfo, a scrappy brooder who kicks his way out of domestic complacency with girlfriend Diaz (played with an irresistible mix of strength and eccentricity by Jacobs’ drop-dead real-life GF, Sara Diaz). In order to join the army, Rodolfo steals the identity of another man named Rodolfo (Gerardo Naranjo), a loner who lives on a liquor-littered little boat. When the first Rodolfo walks out of Diaz’ life on the night she’s throwing a party for his birthday, the second Rodolfo walks right in. Diaz, hungry for the attention and affection that she can’t squeeze out of her Rudolfo, is open to a replacement Rodolfos, at least for a night. Naranjo, who also co-wrote the script, came out of the same AFI class as Jacobs and filmmakers Georgina Riedel and Goran Ducik. Shot on the streets (and buses!) of the residential enclaves around Downtown Los Angeles, GoodTimesKid has a vibe that’s reminiscent (if decidedly lower-concept) to the dystopian romanticism of Ducik’s Wristcutters: A Love Story. It’s my favorite of Jacobs’ films thus far. If you can’t make it to Brooklyn tonight, keep an eye out for GoodTimes’ upcoming DVD release, courtesy of the ubiquitous Benten Films. Also very much of note is Jacobs’ first feature, the rough but bizarrely fascinating Nobody Needs to Know. Shot in black and white in New York City, the film begins with a director (played by Momma’s Man star Matt Boren) auditioning a series of eager young actresses for a role requiring them to improvise a death scene whilst wearing lingerie.  When it comes time for the Jean Seberg-like Iris (Tricia Vessey) to audition, she finds herself unable to go through the motions. The narrative splits to follow both the director who, beguiled by Iris’ refusal to play ball, is desperately trying to get in touch with her; and Iris herself, who studiously ignores her agents persistant calls and drifts into an existential crisis that manifests itself in semi-aggressive inaction. Both stories are filtered through the narration of a young black male who “cuts” between characters and locations as if he’s watching it all via surveillance cameras–taking the power back, he says, from a world that watches him suspiciously regardless of his actual behavior or intent. It’s this aspect of the film’s construction that both elevates Nobody into something really risky and different, but also precludes any real engagement with Iris and her issues. Though the film features performances from a number of name actors (Tricia Vessey, Norman Reedus and, in a funny self-mocking cameo, Emily Mortimer), it never really found an audience or an interested distributor. In notes prepared for the BAM series, Jacobs admits that he got a little bit in over his head with it, as “writing, shooting, cutting and raising funds for years,” led to a loss of focus. “Guess I had dreams of changing cinema, somthing I won’t attempt again, but proud that I tired.” Jacobs eventually put it online for free streaming. You can watch it at the Internet Archive. Showing Jacobs’ three films together (Sundance hit Momma’s Man will screen on Friday, a week before its theatrical release via Kino) reveals much about how Jacobs has grown as a filmmaker while sticking to relatively consistent themes. At the risk of being reductive, these are three films about going into isolation, of people at ill-defined psychic crisis points attempting to force change by going into withdrawl. In Nobody and GoodTimes, our glimpse into the lives of the characters––or as the narrator of Nobody would put it, our power over them––concludes before that change starts to fully take hold. Less concerned than either with formal style Momma’s Man is the more universally satisfying film in part because it’s more conventional––it’s got a true sense of catharsis and emotional closure that the other films lack, it lets the audience exhale before the go home. It’s about somebody who isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but ultimately finds it, and then appears to be able to move on. The same could be said of it’s filmmaker––Momma’s Man feels like the the period on the end of the first paragraph of a career. Maybe it’s the perfect time for an Azazel Jacobs retrospective after all. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/8/11/33861.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 8/11/2008 1:01:29 PM
Body: At age 35, with just three features under his belt, Azazel Jacobs seems like an unlikely candidate for a retrospective, but if such an endeavor pumps up the profile of his first two, lesser-seen films whilst effectively promoting his soon-to-be-released Momma’s Man, I’m not going to argue against it. BAM will devote five nights of programming to Jacobs this week, with all three of his features shown alongside two films selected by the director: the 1980 Clash vehicle Rude Boy, and Aki Kaurismaki’s La Vie de Boheme. The series opens tonight with a screening of Jacobs’ second film, The GoodTimesKid. A punk rock fantasia shot on 35mm stock infamously stolen from a Hollywood feature, the film stars Jacobs as Rodolfo, a scrappy brooder who kicks his way out of domestic complacency with girlfriend Diaz (played with an irresistible mix of strength and eccentricity by Jacobs’ drop-dead real-life GF, Sara Diaz). In order to join the army, Rodolfo steals the identity of another man named Rodolfo (Gerardo Naranjo), a loner who lives on a liquor-littered little boat. When the first Rodolfo walks out of Diaz’ life on the night she’s throwing a party for his birthday, the second Rodolfo walks right in. Diaz, hungry for the attention and affection that she can’t squeeze out of her Rudolfo, is open to a replacement Rodolfos, at least for a night. Naranjo, who also co-wrote the script, came out of the same AFI class as Jacobs and filmmakers Georgina Riedel and Goran Ducik. Shot on the streets (and buses!) of the residential enclaves around Downtown Los Angeles, GoodTimesKid has a vibe that’s reminiscent (if decidedly lower-concept) to the dystopian romanticism of Ducik’s Wristcutters: A Love Story. It’s my favorite of Jacobs’ films thus far. If you can’t make it to Brooklyn tonight, keep an eye out for GoodTimes’ upcoming DVD release, courtesy of the ubiquitous Benten Films. Also very much of note is Jacobs’ first feature, the rough but bizarrely fascinating Nobody Needs to Know. Shot in black and white in New York City, the film begins with a director (played by Momma’s Man star Matt Boren) auditioning a series of eager young actresses for a role requiring them to improvise a death scene whilst wearing lingerie.  When it comes time for the Jean Seberg-like Iris (Tricia Vessey) to audition, she finds herself unable to go through the motions. The narrative splits to follow both the director who, beguiled by Iris’ refusal to play ball, is desperately trying to get in touch with her; and Iris herself, who studiously ignores her agents persistant calls and drifts into an existential crisis that manifests itself in semi-aggressive inaction. Both stories are filtered through the narration of a young black male who “cuts” between characters and locations as if he’s watching it all via surveillance cameras–taking the power back, he says, from a world that watches him suspiciously regardless of his actual behavior or intent. It’s this aspect of the film’s construction that both elevates Nobody into something really risky and different, but also precludes any real engagement with Iris and her issues. Though the film features performances from a number of name actors (Tricia Vessey, Norman Reedus and, in a funny self-mocking cameo, Emily Mortimer), it never really found an audience or an interested distributor. In notes prepared for the BAM series, Jacobs admits that he got a little bit in over his head with it, as “writing, shooting, cutting and raising funds for years,” led to a loss of focus. “Guess I had dreams of changing cinema, somthing I won’t attempt again, but proud that I tired.” Jacobs eventually put it online for free streaming. You can watch it at the Internet Archive. Showing Jacobs’ three films together (Sundance hit Momma’s Man will screen on Friday, a week before its theatrical release via Kino) reveals much about how Jacobs has grown as a filmmaker while sticking to relatively consistent themes. At the risk of being reductive, these are three films about going into isolation, of people at ill-defined psychic crisis points attempting to force change by going into withdrawl. In Nobody and GoodTimes, our glimpse into the lives of the characters––or as the narrator of Nobody would put it, our power over them––concludes before that change starts to fully take hold. Less concerned than either with formal style Momma’s Man is the more universally satisfying film in part because it’s more conventional––it’s got a true sense of catharsis and emotional closure that the other films lack, it lets the audience exhale before the go home. It’s about somebody who isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but ultimately finds it, and then appears to be able to move on. The same could be said of it’s filmmaker––Momma’s Man feels like the the period on the end of the first paragraph of a career. Maybe it’s the perfect time for an Azazel Jacobs retrospective after all. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:01:29 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com8/11/2008 1:01:29 PM At age 35, with just three features under his belt, Azazel Jacobs seems like an unlikely candidate for a retrospective, but if such an endeavor pumps up the profile of his first two, lesser-seen films whilst effectively promoting his soon-to-be-released Momma’s Man, I’m not going to argue against it. BAM will devote five nights of programming to Jacobs this week, with all three of his features shown alongside two films selected by the director: the 1980 Clash vehicle Rude Boy, and Aki Kaurismaki’s La Vie de Boheme. The series opens tonight with a screening of Jacobs’ second film, The GoodTimesKid. A punk rock fantasia shot on 35mm stock infamously stolen from a Hollywood feature, the film stars Jacobs as Rodolfo, a scrappy brooder who kicks his way out of domestic complacency with girlfriend Diaz (played with an irresistible mix of strength and eccentricity by Jacobs’ drop-dead real-life GF, Sara Diaz). In order to join the army, Rodolfo steals the identity of another man named Rodolfo (Gerardo Naranjo), a loner who lives on a liquor-littered little boat. When the first Rodolfo walks out of Diaz’ life on the night she’s throwing a party for his birthday, the second Rodolfo walks right in. Diaz, hungry for the attention and affection that she can’t squeeze out of her Rudolfo, is open to a replacement Rodolfos, at least for a night. Naranjo, who also co-wrote the script, came out of the same AFI class as Jacobs and filmmakers Georgina Riedel and Goran Ducik. Shot on the streets (and buses!) of the residential enclaves around Downtown Los Angeles, GoodTimesKid has a vibe that’s reminiscent (if decidedly lower-concept) to the dystopian romanticism of Ducik’s Wristcutters: A Love Story. It’s my favorite of Jacobs’ films thus far. If you can’t make it to Brooklyn tonight, keep an eye out for GoodTimes’ upcoming DVD release, courtesy of the ubiquitous Benten Films. Also very much of note is Jacobs’ first feature, the rough but bizarrely fascinating Nobody Needs to Know. Shot in black and white in New York City, the film begins with a director (played by Momma’s Man star Matt Boren) auditioning a series of eager young actresses for a role requiring them to improvise a death scene whilst wearing lingerie.  When it comes time for the Jean Seberg-like Iris (Tricia Vessey) to audition, she finds herself unable to go through the motions. The narrative splits to follow both the director who, beguiled by Iris’ refusal to play ball, is desperately trying to get in touch with her; and Iris herself, who studiously ignores her agents persistant calls and drifts into an existential crisis that manifests itself in semi-aggressive inaction. Both stories are filtered through the narration of a young black male who “cuts” between characters and locations as if he’s watching it all via surveillance cameras–taking the power back, he says, from a world that watches him suspiciously regardless of his actual behavior or intent. It’s this aspect of the film’s construction that both elevates Nobody into something really risky and different, but also precludes any real engagement with Iris and her issues. Though the film features performances from a number of name actors (Tricia Vessey, Norman Reedus and, in a funny self-mocking cameo, Emily Mortimer), it never really found an audience or an interested distributor. In notes prepared for the BAM series, Jacobs admits that he got a little bit in over his head with it, as “writing, shooting, cutting and raising funds for years,” led to a loss of focus. “Guess I had dreams of changing cinema, somthing I won’t attempt again, but proud that I tired.” Jacobs eventually put it online for free streaming. You can watch it at the Internet Archive. Showing Jacobs’ three films together (Sundance hit Momma’s Man will screen on Friday, a week before its theatrical release via Kino) reveals much about how Jacobs has grown as a filmmaker while sticking to relatively consistent themes. At the risk of being reductive, these are three films about going into isolation, of people at ill-defined psychic crisis points attempting to force change by going into withdrawl. In Nobody and GoodTimes, our glimpse into the lives of the characters––or as the narrator of Nobody would put it, our power over them––concludes before that change starts to fully take hold. Less concerned than either with formal style Momma’s Man is the more universally satisfying film in part because it’s more conventional––it’s got a true sense of catharsis and emotional closure that the other films lack, it lets the audience exhale before the go home. It’s about somebody who isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but ultimately finds it, and then appears to be able to move on. The same could be said of it’s filmmaker––Momma’s Man feels like the the period on the end of the first paragraph of a career. Maybe it’s the perfect time for an Azazel Jacobs retrospective after all. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/lovetriangle/MemberTagFilms.aspxlovetriangle
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